Job Hopping Is Out, Job Hugging Is In for Fearful Workers

The extra pay that typically comes with joining another company has practically vanished. Disengagement is so widespread across the U.S. and global workforces that cheerier pastures are hard to find.

And resigning without a plan feels more reckless now than in the good old days (2021). Back then, you could get by on pandemic savings and stimulus money, live the #vanlife for a while, then watch your inbox fill with interview requests from businesses on hiring sprees.

How times have changed in just a few short years. Today, employees are unwilling to risk change and simply go through the motions. The number of Americans quitting their jobs, and the openings available to people looking for work, continue to decline, according to federal data released on Wednesday.

The trend of staying put out of fear is known as “job hugging,” a sharp turn from the job hopping of recent years.

Like a bad penny

This is a new headache for employees, bosses and the economy writ large.

Go-getters hankering for promotions might lose out if mediocre co-workers refuse to vacate the next rung on the corporate ladder. 

“When people were moving during the Great Resignation, that allowed others to get promoted, perhaps ahead of schedule and have a stretch job,” says Alan Guarino, vice chairman of consulting firm Korn Ferry. “Now people can’t move up and they potentially get demotivated because of the lack of opportunity.”

Managers, meanwhile, were only a short time ago complaining about low retention rates. Now, there might not be enough healthy turnover to reinvigorate their teams.

Leaders usually have ways of managing out unwanted employees. There’s “quiet firing,” basically sidelining someone to underscore the writing on the wall. Another favorite tactic is a performance-improvement plan.

“Truthfully, being put on a performance-improvement plan means, ‘We do not want you here,’” says labor attorney Kim Cramer. “That sounds really harsh, but in my experience, performance-improvement plans are not meant to help the employee.”

Instead of taking the hint, though, more people are riding out their employment as long as it lasts. In recent weeks, Cramer has had a surge of clients ask her to review their severance agreements after being terminated. She estimates 60% to 70% of them knew they had fallen out of favor a while ago but didn’t leave.

Exceptions to the rule

The prototypical job hugger is a drag on the team, but not all are like that. Some are average contributors or even high achievers.

Doug Yakola, a former McKinsey senior partner who is now an independent consultant, notes many workers no longer take an up-or-out approach to their careers. Instead of leaving for a bigger title and greater responsibility when they hit a ceiling, more people are willing to remain in neutral if the pay and work-life balance are decent.

A tech worker I’ve known for 20 years is in this position. He sees no upward mobility and resents his employer’s rightward political turn. But he earns well and has a sweet, hybrid schedule that affords ample time for hobbies. He keeps putting in a good-enough effort at work because the job, though unfulfilling, serves its purpose in his life.

B-teamers like him can be valuable to companies that can’t realistically expect everyone to be an all-star, Yakola says. This is especially true at businesses like the ones he advises, which often need turnarounds and aren’t exactly magnets for top talent.

“I actually like job huggers in a weird sort of way because I can’t replace employees very easily, and I need to keep the experience,” he says.

There is also a strain of type-A job huggers. They reached the upper echelons of their organizations but feel blocked from the very top. They are disillusioned yet too risk-averse to break away. And it’s not in their DNA to slack off.

“I work with somebody who hates being a lawyer but she’s amazing at it,” says Alisia Gill, a former corporate HR chief who coaches midcareer women. “She cries in her car every morning before she goes to work, and then she goes in there and does her job because she doesn’t know what else to do.”

Gentle shove

In cases where a company wants someone to leave, but the person keeps hanging on, firing seems like the obvious solution. But managers say they would much rather have an employee leave voluntarily.

It’s often cheaper, since businesses might owe severance pay to people they let go. A resignation spares the boss an awkward conversation. What’s more, it can preserve relations with the rest of the team. It’s easier to manage people whose friend took another opportunity than it is to lead employees whose pal you just canned.

Research by University of Chicago economist Virginia Minni suggests a relatively simple strategy can help nudge job huggers toward the door: reflection.

She and colleagues studied roughly 3,000 white-collar workers whose employer put them through a series of exercises to suss out their sense of purpose. Overall productivity increased for a few reasons.

“This actually encouraged some people to leave on their own,” Minni says.

While others found better-fitting roles internally, being forced to confront the drudgery of their jobs was enough to make a bunch of low performers quit.

So, if you are hugging your humdrum job and your boss strikes up a philosophical conversation about the meaning of life and work, you’ll know what’s going on.

Write to Callum Borchers at callum.borchers@wsj.com